Friday, July 30, 2010

Blanche Knopf, who cofounded the publishing firm named for her husband Alfred in 1915 and worked with writers such as Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain, was born today in New York City in 1894. John Thornton, who is working on a biography of the Knopfs at UT-Austin, discusses his work here.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

BookTV talks to Malcolm O'Hagan, president of the proposed American Writers Museum that would honor the literary heritage of the United States (let's hope genre fiction authors would be equally recognized).

Monday, July 26, 2010

Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, Sapper's adventurous ex-World War I captain, is featured this week on BBC Radio 7, read by Julian Rhind-Tutt (The Heat of the Sun, etc.). Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

Friday, July 23, 2010

On the Wonders and Marvels blog, Catherine Delors discusses the Rue Nicaise bombing of 1800 that attempted to end the life of Napoleon, stating that it is "considered the first modern police investigation." The case is the basis for Delors's new novel For the King.

About the image: Napoleon at Fontainebleu, ca. 1814. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Thursday, July 22, 2010

On the Great War blog, George Simmers reports on the "Buchan and the Idea of Modernity" conference held at University of London on July 10, which included discussions of the Richard Hannay novels Mr. Standfast (1919) and The Three Hostages (1924) and Buchan as a Scottish writer. (Go here to see the conference program)

About the image: John Buchan, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

The recent healthy prices for the works of Ian Fleming continued at the Sotheby's July 15th English literature auction when a copy of Diamonds Are Forever (1956) went for £1,875 (approximately $2,870).

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Mad dogs and Englishman detect ... Actor-director-playwright-composer Noel Coward adds investigator to his long resume in Marcy Kahan's Design for Murder this week on BBC Radio 7. Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Joseph Hansen, creator of groundbreaking gay investigator Dave Brandstetter, was born today in Aberdeen, South Dakota, in 1923. He was nominated for Edgars for "The Anderson Boy" and "McIntyre's Donald," for a Shamus for Gravedigger (1982), and for a Shamus for "Merely Players." He also received the lifetime achievement award from the Private Eye Writers of America and Lambda Literary Awards for A Country of Old Men (1991) and Living Upstairs (1993). Four of his poems were set to music in a piece called Vocalese by composer Richard Rodney Bennett, best known for his scores for Murder on the Orient Express and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Hansen died in 2004.

"almost all the folksay about homosexuality is false. So I had some fun turning cliches and stereotypes on their heads."—Joseph Hansen, qtd. in Contemporary Authors.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Joseph Pugh of the UK's National Archives discusses entertaining aspects of the archives' records relating to film, including an attempt by explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes (a cousin of Ralph) to blow up the set of Doctor Doolittle.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Today New York Review of Books Classics reissues Three Ladies by the Sea, a collaboration between Edward Gorey and Rhoda Levine that has been out of print since the 1970s. As Goreyana notes, the book is dedicated to Emma Watson (daughter of Julie Andrews) and composer Sandy Wilson (best known for The Boy Friend). NYRB Classics offers a preview of Gorey's drawings for the book here.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Ellis Peters's ex-soldier monk is featured this week on BBC Radio 7, in Light on the Road to Woodstock (drawn from Peters's A Rare Benedictine, 1988, which focuses on what led Brother Cadfael to join the Benedictines). Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

In the June 18 Times Literary Supplement, British novelist and journalist Judith Flanders discusses the first known female fictional detectives, particularly those pertaining to Experiences of a Lady Detective (aka Revelations of a Lady Detective, 1884; attributed to W. S. Hayward, but there is controversy about that); accounts based on the Constance Kent case (most recently the subject of Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher); and a convincing unmasking of the pseudonymous Andrew Forrester Jr. (The Female Detective, ca. 1863). Unfortunately, Flanders's piece only appears to be available in the TLS print edition. Clues25.1 (2006) and 26.3 (2008) featured articles that discussed Victorian female sleuths; the author of one, Dagni Bredesen of Eastern Illinois University, is working on scholarly editions of The Female Detective and Revelations of a Lady Detective.

Also of interest in the June 18th TLS: Michael Dirda's recollections as an assistant editor of the Washington Post Book World: "Elmore Leonard confessed that he was tired of being asked to review gritty crime novels, so I talked him into writing about the latest Anita Brookner" (16). Readers might also peruse Jonathan Barnes's June 23rd discussion (available online) of Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Creeping Man" (1923), in the context of a review for the 56-volume The Complete Works of Arthur Conan Doyle (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).

Update: Bredesen's scholarly edition of The Female Detective and Revelations of a Lady Detective has been publishedunder the titleThe First Female Detectives.

About the image: The Mutiny of the Thunder (1878) by W. S. Hayward, one of the authors discussed in Judith Flanders's June 18th TLS article.

Monday, July 05, 2010

On BBC Radio 7 this week, ex-Dr. Who David Tennant reads Pamela Branch's The Wooden Overcoat(1951, rpt. Rue Morgue P, 2006)—where inconvenient bodies litter the Asterisk Club, a home for wrongfully acquitted murderers. Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

Thursday, July 01, 2010

On the Great War blog, George Simmers discusses Philip MacDonald's novel Patrol (1927; films 1929, 1934). The talented MacDonald is probably best known for The List of Adrian Messenger (1959, film 1963) and Warrant for X (aka The Nursemaid Who Disappeared, adapted as the film Twenty-Three Paces to Baker Street [dir Henry Hathaway, 1956]).

Simmers follows up this post with speculation on the identity of a character in John Buchan's Richard Hannay novel Mr. Standfast (1919): Could it be a thinly disguised D. H. Lawrence?

About the image: Victor McLaglen in The Lost Patrol (adapted from Philip MacDonald's Patrol, dir. John Ford, 1934)